


Pan's Labyrinth drabbles

by sophinisba



Category: El Laberinto del Fauno | Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Double Drabble, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, Sad, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-03
Updated: 2007-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>From Trascendenza's prompt "Revolution, loss, redemption" (I sort of left out the last one)</p></blockquote>





	1. Clean Up This mess

1.

Carmen told her to burn the dress. The stains on the slip are actually worse – not just mud but a sticky slime Mercedes doesn't even recognize – but it's salvageable. Ofelia will have a new dress, if not as fancy as the one she's ruined, and no one will be able to tell she's not quite clean underneath.

Mercedes scrubs at the rough cloth and thinks what her mother would have done if she'd ruined such a fine dress at that age. But then, Mercedes never had a dress like that one. She never had dreams of escaping like some fairy princess either.

2.

The Captain told her to clean up the mess, after he had his soldiers take away the body. Mercedes kneels to light a fire in the empty room, but something catches her eye among the dead grey cinders.

"That's mandrágora," Jacinta says later when Mercedes carries it downstairs, wrapped in the bloody sheets. "Selfish, stubborn thing. It saves itself and lets everything else burn... and lets you and me clean up after. It has its uses though. Grind it up, and take the powder with you when you go. And go soon, child. It's not safe for you here anymore."

3.

Pedro told her to take the baby and follow Javier, and reach the border before sunrise. But Mercedes won't leave until they've buried the girl. He helps her dig to make it go faster.

He calls it a victory for the Republic.

"There is no Republic anymore," says Mercedes. "There's just bodies and blood."

"And you never liked blood..."

"I don't mind getting my hands dirty if I know there's a good reason for it."

The grave is deep enough now and the baby is crying, but once Mercedes picks Ofelia up again she can't stand to let her go.


	2. Promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Trascendenza's prompt "Revolution, loss, redemption" (I sort of left out the last one)

The Revolution didn't start until after the war.

"If we must fight," Javier said, "we should be fighting for real justice and equality, not for keeping things the way they are."

So he spoke at the dinner table the night they heard the news from Africa, and Carmen and little Ofelia kept silent. So he shouted at the meeting in the occupied town hall the next day, and for hours the other men and women of the council shouted back, but when it came to a vote they sided with him and divided all the property among all the people.

* * *

Javier was shot as soon as the Rebels took the town, and Carmen lost her husband, her home, the chance of raising her daughter in a free republic, or in any kind of free country at all.

Lost her livelihood as well, or so it seemed, for no one would want to hire a Red, or a Red's widow, for any decent kind of work.

Then the Captain came and told her to stop sewing. Told her he'd give her a new life in a new Spain.

He was a liar, but at least he never promised her a Revolution.


	3. Compromise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Baranduin's prompt: Ofelia, grapes, dinner table

"You'll understand when you're older, child." The rest goes unspoken: _We need to eat. These are the sacrifices we must make._

But there was a time when the hunger was much worse, Ofelia remembers. As a girl of six she'd dreamed of grapes and bread and ripe cheese, and she didn't care where the food came from, whose table she had to sit at, or how much they scorned her, as long as there was something to fill her belly. It was her mother who taught her to respect herself more than that.

When we were younger, mamá, you understood.


End file.
